Bad Analysis Leads To Bad Solutions

For John, BLUF:  The author argues that some of our social problems may not be due to evil corporations, but rather cultural shifts as we embraced more freedom in our interactions, leading to a breakdown in relationships.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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The tragic — and overlooked — fallout from the ’60s sexual revolution

From The New York Post, by Ms Mary Eberstadt, 23 August 2019.

Here is the lede plus one:

Declining life expectancy, mass shootings, alarming rates of mental illness, rising white nationalism, the opioid crisis:  By many measures, our society is in trouble, and we are ignoring a root cause:  the unprecedented familial dispersion that followed the 1960s sexual revolution.

At heart, that revolution aimed to radically sever human sexuality from marriage and child-rearing, from the responsibilities society had hitherto imposed on the individual sexual appetite.  Afterward, fatherless homes, family shrinkage and breakup, childlessness and abortion all became commonplace.  The net effect of these changes is having fewer people to call one’s own.

Many Americans would say that their own lives have been enhanced mightily by the new liberties wrought by the ’60s revolution.  Perhaps.  But if we examine what these same changes have delivered at a collective level, an unsettling picture emerges.

One feature of the new landscape is widespread loneliness.  And while initial studies were trained on the isolated elderly, scholarly focus is rapidly expanding as social-science data reveal ravaging isolation at the opposite end of the spectrum.

I believe Ms Mary Eberstadt is correct, but I believe her analysis is incomplete.  We need to examine the impact of LBJ (Great Society) and California Assemblyman Jim Hayes (No Fault Divorce).  These were not political actions that strengthen the family.  Just the opposite.  I think that, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan pointed out in his report, The Negro Family:  The Case Fore Nation action, family life can have a major impact on culture and on individual success.

Until we fix the family everything else is just bandaids.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff